![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/SEI_291004141.jpg\")
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The number of data centres is rapidly increasing<\/p>\n
JIM LO SCALZO\/EPA\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Data centres built to power AIs produce so much heat that they can raise the surface temperature of the land around them by several degrees \u2013 creating so-called data centre heat islands that may already be affecting up to 340 million people.<\/p>\n
The number of data centres built around the world is forecast to rise enormously. JLL, a real estate company, estimates that data centre capacity will double between 2025 and 2030<\/a> \u2013 with AI expected to account for half that demand.<\/p>\n Andrea Marinoni<\/a> at the University of Cambridge, UK, and his colleagues saw that the amount of energy needed to run a data centre had been steadily increasing of late and was likely to \u201cexplode\u201d in the coming years, so wanted to quantify the impact.<\/p>\n The researchers took satellite measurements of land surface temperatures over the past 20 years and cross-referenced them against the geographical coordinates of more than 8400 AI data centres. Recognising that surface temperature could be affected by other factors, the researchers chose to focus their investigation on data centres located away from densely populated areas.<\/p>\n They discovered that land surface temperatures increased by an average of 2\u00b0C (3.6\u00b0F) in the months after an AI data centre started operations. In the most extreme cases, the increase in temperature was 9.1\u00b0C (16.4\u00b0F).<\/p>\n The effect wasn\u2019t limited to the immediate surroundings of the data centres: the team found increased temperatures up to 10 kilometres away. Seven kilometres away, there was only a 30 per cent reduction in the intensity.<\/p>\n \u201cThe results we had were quite surprising,\u201d says Marinoni. \u201cThis could become a huge problem.\u201d<\/p>\n Using population data, the researchers estimate that more than 340 million people live within 10 kilometres of data centres, so live in a place that is warmer than it would be if the data centre hadn\u2019t been built there. Marinoni says that areas including the Baj\u00edo region in Mexico and the Aragon province in Spain saw a 2\u00b0C (3.6\u00b0F) temperature increase in the 20 years between 2004 and 2024 that couldn\u2019t otherwise be explained.<\/p>\n Chris Preist<\/a> at the University of Bristol, UK, says the results may be more nuanced than they first appear. \u201cIt would be worth doing follow-up research to understand to what extent it\u2019s the heat generated from computation versus the heat generated from the building itself,\u201d he says, suggesting that the building being heated by sunlight may be part of the effect.<\/p>\n Either way, the data centre is still increasing the ground temperature, says Marinoni. \u201cThe message I would like to convey is to be careful about designing and developing data centres.\u201d<\/p>\n Topics:<\/p>\n artificial intelligence<\/a>\/data<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The number of data centres is rapidly increasing JIM LO SCALZO\/EPA\/Shutterstock Data centres built to power AIs produce…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":569331,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,2458,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-569330","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-data","14":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/569331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}